Okay, I’m working on a project at work and I need help. My Google skills are exremely lacking here.
I work at a grocery co-op in Health and Body care and the store is moving to a larger location. My boss in the department and I want the new location to have a facility for us to make our own soaps, shampoos, bath stuff, etc, and sell it. We’re trying to convince the higher-ups that this is feasible. Has anyone ever been to a store that does this? My boss says that a Nugget Market in Vacoville, CA, and a Wegman’s in Cherry Hill, NJ, both do this, but the websites say nothing about it. I’m well and truly stumped.
If anyone knows of any store that does something like this I’d be grateful.
Well, there are any number of Ye Olde Gifte Shoppes where the proprietors make their own hand-cut big chunky cakes of soap, and put up little bottles of lavender oil and jars of potpourri and Grandma’s Hand Salve and whatnot, but I’ve never heard of one on a grand industrial scale. For one thing, it’s really labor-intensive–standing there measuring 1/8 cups of potpourri into baggies takes a long time to get a bunch of 'em done, and unless you’re prepared to buy some sort of filling machine to do it, you’ll just have to pay a person to stand there with a plastic measuring cup and a stack of baggies.
So I can’t imagine that it would be economically feasible for a store to plan on doing anything more than “a few” of their own line of personal care items, certainly not that it would be their whole business plan, lacking, as I said, filling machinery and a whole assembly-line setup, with labeling machines, etc.
Making your own shampoo is difficult, as modern shampoo requires obscure chemicals available by the 55-gallon barrel to chemistry labs. Hand creams and lotions aren’t quite as complicated, but still aren’t as dead-simple as making soap.
If ya wanna add homemade soap or hand creams to your product lineup, I can see that happening, as long as your boss understands that he’s going to have to pay someone to stand there and cut it up into cakes, and pour or shovel it into tiny jars, and stick labels on it.
No doubt there will also be relevant Health Department regulations that will have to be investigated and observed.
Why not call or e-mail those two stores and ask them?
Oh, yeah, this is totally in addition to other regular products, and it would be just a few things.
And I would probably be the one making it and packaging it and stuff. This is one of those situations where I think it would be awesome to do something like make soap for a living but I’m woefully ignorant about anything that goes into the business end.
I will e-mail the stores that I mentioned. Thanks for your response, DDG.
Anne-Marie Faiola is apparently the doyenne of small-business soapmaking entrepreneurship (never heard of her myself, but Google knows all), and her website is fascinating and informative.
Thanks again, DDG, that site is awesome. This is a pie in the sky dream for both my boss and me. I hope we can convince our big bosses to believe in us. If nothing else, we’re going to try to hold soap-making classes, in which case that site will be invaluable.
I used to frequent the Nugget in Vacaville CA when I lived there and I never knew they made their own soaps, etc. Not that they don’t, just that I never noticed it.
There is a store based in Colorado called Melt where they hand-make all their products–soap, hand lotion, bath oil, fizzy bath things. I don’t know if they make the stuff on location at all their retail outlets, though, or if they just did this in their first store.
Making the products is the easy part and researching it is really not worth much of your time at this point. If you really want to sell this idea, concentrate on the marketing. The higher-ups won’t give a rat’s ass how wonderful the soap is. They’ll want to see your marketing plans.
Get figures on how huge the market is for boutique cosmetics. Come up with packaging ideas and mockups. At this point you’re selling the idea. Making and selling the products will never happen if you don’t do a good job of selling the idea first.
‘Bath Junkie’ sells basic lotions, washes, and scrubs, etc, that the customers customize with their choice of scents and colors. They also have ‘group parties’ where, for a fixed price, everyone in the group takes home several small customized items that they have mixed and matched.
I have never shopped there myself, but it seems somewhat popular with the area ladies.
I’ve been shopping at sumbody in Sebastopol, CA since I moved out here and I am completely hooked. The Sebastopol store was the only store then, but they now have 6 or 7 in the area I think. They make everything by hand, and their products are incredible. I am completely hooked on their fizzers, bath melts, salt and sugar scrubs, and face and body oils.
Great, everybody, thank you all so much! And that’s a great idea, daffyduck, to come at it from what the demand is, rather than from a perspective of how successful it’s been elsewhere. I think that the fact that it’s not being done elsewhere at grocery type stores might be a good sign that it would make our store unique and special. Hopefully!